Sciformatix

Software Developer Creates an Affordable, Flexible Lab Information Management System

Sciformatix wanted to make it easier and more cost-effective for scientists and other laboratory workers to manage information and processes, so the company is developing a new laboratory information management system known as SciLIMS. To do so, Sciformatix used Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 and a software-plus-services delivery model, which will result in a full-featured, subscription-based solution that users can access through rich-client, browser-based, and mobile interfaces. Sciformatix is bringing its solution to market at least 15 percent faster than it could have with other development tools and has reduced development costs by 25 percent or more. Labs benefit from the solution because they will have a lower cost of entry and total cost of ownership over time, and Sciformatix designed the solution so that labs have the flexibility to tailor it to support a lab’s changing needs.

 

Situation

Sciformatix, a start-up company founded in 2007, was established to provide flexible, cost-effective laboratory information management system (LIMS) solutions for labs across a variety of industries, including life sciences, food and beverage, chemicals, petrochemicals, forensics, and cosmetics, among others. LIMS solutions aid labs in the management of samples, lab processes, instrumentation, compliance standards, and other lab functions. Traditionally, these solutions have been costly to implement and difficult for scientists to adapt to their own processes.

Because of the Microsoft development tools that we chose, we were able to achieve productivity gains, conserve costs, and provide a higher-quality product … for our customers. Thomas Kent Chief Executive Officer, Sciformatix

Lab scientists perform numerous quality-assurance checks on samples and intermediate test results. They carefully note all the conditions involved in a particular test and clearly define the processes used to conduct it. If they come up with an idea of how to improve an existing testing process or want to create a new process, they have to change the protocols and conditions and record those as well. “All that information is what LIMS solutions are meant to manage for scientists,” says Pascual Starink, PhD, Chief Technology Officer for Sciformatix. “However, existing LIMS solutions tend to be designed with a specific lab setup in mind and won’t allow scientists to easily adjust them to reflect differences in the lab environments and new workflow processes. That work usually needs to be done by the LIMS vendor, which can take a lot of time and money. We wanted to create an accessible LIMS solution that scientists themselves could quickly tailor as needed to incorporate their changing workflow processes and conditions.”

The company’s founders have firsthand experience with the challenges related both to implementing commercial LIMS solutions and to developing them in-house. Says Thomas Kent, Chief Executive Officer for Sciformatix, “Both prospects are complicated, time-consuming, and expensive. We determined that the best LIMS solution would unite technical and industry knowledge with greater usability and flexibility.”

Sciformatix also sought to make it easier for labs to afford a LIMS solution, which can be cost-prohibitive, especially for start-up organizations. “Normally, installing a LIMS costs a minimum of $50,000, and then labs need to maintain it,” says Kent. “We wanted a lower cost of entry so that labs could benefit from all the LIMS-related efficiencies and audit capabilities, even if the organization is just starting out.”

Solution

Sciformatix decided to adopt a software-plus-services delivery model for its LIMS solution—known as SciLIMS—so that it could offer affordability without sacrificing functionality. The company runs its internal operations on software-plus-services solutions such as Microsoft® Exchange Online messaging, Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM Online business software, and Microsoft Office Live Meeting Web conferencing, so it knew the value that such solutions can deliver.

Multiple Points of Access
Because Sciformatix embraced a software-plus-services approach, the company can easily provide a variety of ways for scientists and others to interact with SciLIMS. “This approach gives us the ability to offer multiple access points to the same information,” says Kent. “We decided to develop rich-client, browser-based, and mobile interfaces for SciLIMS.”

Lab environments frequently contain a large number of instruments and peripheral devices, which would be difficult to connect to a solely browser-based LIMS solution. Wanting to deliver the ease of use that is associated with browser-based systems as well as enhanced functionality and interoperability, Sciformatix determined that a rich-client application that employees in the lab can download and install with a single click was the right architecture for SciLIMS (see Figure 1).

The company determined that lab managers, executives, and other stakeholders do not necessarily need the same rich-client functionality, but they do need access to lab information from wherever they may be. So the company developed a browser-based dashboard interface to make it possible for these users to quickly and easily monitor progress, review reports and studies, and so on.

Figure 1. The SciLIMS rich-client interface provides many means for lab employees to track their information.

Sciformatix is providing a third point of access to SciLIMS: a mobile application that gives the same stakeholder audience a dashboard user interface that is similar to the browser-based interface. Even those working on-site in labs can benefit from the mobile SciLIMS application. Employees working on certain types of lab operations find it cumbersome and inconvenient to be tethered to a computer. Giving those users SciLIMS functionality in a mobile device makes it easy for them to gather and enter data, where they need to, and then sync that data either immediately or afterward with the back-end system. Sciformatix based the mobile version of SciLIMS on Windows Mobile® 6 software.

The Development Process
To develop its LIMS solution, Sciformatix opted to use the Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 Professional and Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server development systems and to base the SciLIMS rich-client user interface on the Composite UI Application Block, a reusable, source code–based framework that offers proven components for building complex, smart-client user interfaces. The company also uses the Smart Client Software Factory, which gives architects and developers guidelines that help them create composite smart-client applications. “By using the Smart Client Software Factory and Composite UI Application Block, our developers save time by giving our designers a set of user-interface components, wizards, and design patterns that are flexible and extensible,” says Starink.

Back-End Solution Components
When Sciformatix releases SciLIMS, the solution will run on the Windows Server® 2008 operating system and Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 data management software. “We chose to use SQL Server 2008 for multiple reasons,” notes Kent. “It provides new built-in data encryption capabilities and tight integration with .NET Framework components, and it’s less costly to administer and maintain than an Oracle database. It also gives us the scalability and security features that we need to serve our target customers.”

All communications for the solution go through Windows® Communication Foundation, which is at the heart of the company’s service-oriented architecture (SOA) strategy. Says Starink, “We’ve done a lot of application development in the SOA arena and felt the pain of dealing with different protocols and the challenges in configuring them. Therefore, we’re big proponents of Windows Communication Foundation because it lets developers focus on service components and business logic, without having to think about which protocols to use.” Sciformatix also used Windows Workflow Foundation for designing workflow processes.

SciLIMS Testing and Launch
Prior to releasing SciLIMS, Sciformatix plans to deploy it to a select group of customers for several phases of testing. The first phase will involve 3 to 5 customers and take place in May 2008; the second will include approximately 20 customers, who will test the solution in July 2008. “In addition to testing domain functionality, we want these customers to validate our infrastructure and ensure that SciLIMS meets their scalability needs,” says Starink. Sciformatix expects its solution to be released to the market in October 2008.

The company is working with OpSource, a software-plus-services hosting provider and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to host SciLIMS for customers. “OpSource has skilled resources for deploying and managing hardware and software infrastructures and a first-class data center,” says Kent. “Our customers also will receive first-line technical support from skilled OpSource technicians.”

Benefits

Because of its use of Visual Studio 2008 and software-plus-services elements, Sciformatix is realizing a shorter development timeline while providing a feature-rich solution that is easy for labs to adopt. “There’s no question that SciLIMS will be different and far better than if we’d developed it with other tools,” says Kent. “Because of the Microsoft development tools that we chose, we were able to achieve productivity gains; conserve costs; and provide a higher-quality product, enhanced customizability, and greater flexibility for our customers.”

Faster Time-to-Market
Sciformatix reduced the amount of time required to develop a fully functional solution—and therefore will bring its solution to market more quickly—because of its use of Microsoft development tools and the integration among Microsoft technologies. “The developers at Sciformatix have been using Visual Studio for years because it’s an extremely efficient environment that makes it possible to be more productive than with any other,” says Starink. “We upgraded to Visual Studio 2008 because it supports the .NET Framework to an even greater extent than before and because the graphical design support in Visual Studio 2008 is unparalleled in the market.”

We use the code-analysis tools in Visual Studio 2008 to help us pinpoint performance issues much more quickly than before, resulting in a shorter development timeline. Pascual Starink, PhD Chief Technology Officer, Sciformatix

For examples of tools that boost their productivity, the Sciformatix developers point to the IntelliSense® feature in Visual Studio 2008, along with efficiencies gained from the integration of SQL Server, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, and Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server, which the company is using as a back-end coordination device and source-control environment. “We’ve achieved at least a 15 percent overall improvement in productivity thanks to our upgrade from Visual Studio 2005 to 2008,” states Starink. “With Visual Studio 2008, our developers can perform software and database design, code development, testing, and deployment testing from within a single environment, saving considerable time and reducing hassles. Plus, we use the code-analysis tools in Visual Studio 2008 to help us pinpoint performance issues much more quickly than before, resulting in a shorter development timeline.”

Continues Starink, “We’ve also shaved several months off our development time by replacing a third-party object relational mapping tool with the new Language Integrated Query [LINQ] component, along with SQLMetal and Visual Studio 2008.” Sciformatix developers initially used a third-party tool that was difficult to learn and maintain. Worse, the tool’s lack of integration with Visual Studio meant that developers had to leave the design environment in which they primarily worked and go through multiple steps to use data that was stored in databases with service-oriented applications.

Says Kent, “I estimate that we’ve saved a minimum of 25 percent in costs because of the reduced development time. We not only can get to market faster, but also do so with fewer development resources required. We’re also seeing ongoing time-savings in terms of maintenance.”

Greater Agility for Customers
Although SciLIMS offers plenty of built-in functionality, the solution also grants lab workers the freedom to determine which data they want to capture and report on, and how. They can either create their own workflow processes or customize those provided to more closely address the specific needs of their environments. “Scientists can optimize a process and save a new copy of the workflow in the system without losing what they’ve done already,” says Starink. “And because SciLIMS puts control into scientists’ hands through the user interface, scientists can make those changes themselves within hours or days, versus the weeks or months that they would have to wait for a vendor to revise a system’s code.”

In addition, Sciformatix designed the solution so that scientists and other stakeholders in a project can search SciLIMS to determine the exact workflow process and testing conditions that were used in a particular day or month. Explains Kent, “Scientists can experiment with a variety of workflow processes and types of data collection. They can then make determinations about the optimal combination of the two and adjust SciLIMS accordingly. In this way, they can ensure that they’re making the most of their time and getting the best, most accurate results.”

Low Total Cost of Ownership
By choosing to employ a software-plus-services model, Sciformatix can make a LIMS solution affordable to more customers. Being able to spread out predictable costs over time helps labs in their planning and budgeting. And because implementation is a straightforward matter of downloading a client, lab workers can begin using SciLIMS extremely quickly. That means that customers start receiving a return on their technology investment right away. Continues Kent, “Using a subscription model makes it possible for us to remove some key barriers to entry for customers and give them the ability to use a feature-rich LIMS solution within their lab environments for as little as a few hundred dollars a month. They’ll save on licensing fees and avoid administrative costs related to hardware, software infrastructure, system and database administrators, and software engineers.

“Software-plus-services gives us a huge competitive advantage,” says Kent.
 
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the world’s most popular development environment for designing, developing, and testing next-generation Windows-based solutions and Web applications and services. By improv-ing the development experience for Windows, the Web, mobile devices, and Microsoft Office, Visual Studio 2008 helps organizations deliver a variety of solutions more productively than ever before. Visual Studio Team System expands the product line with new software tools that enable greater communication and collaboration throughout the development life cycle. Interaction between developers and de-signers is enhanced through the use of Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft Expression® Studio. With Visual Studio 2008, businesses can deliver modern service-oriented solutions more efficiently.

For more information about Visual Studio 2008, go to:
msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about OpSource products and services, call (800) 664-9973, or visit the Web site at:
www.opsource.net

For more information about Sciformatix products and services, call (877) 724-7656, or visit the Web site at:
www.sciformatix.com